Chair mats designed for use with office chairs are well known. Chair mats were introduced in the 1960's with the familiar rectangular lip projection becoming the industry standard. The rectangular lip projection is designed to extend floor protection for the center region of the popular Steelcase and pedestal desks, which feature compact leg room flanked by drawers on either side. However, around this time, traditional desks were incorporating a single leg support centered under the drawers, thereby eliminating the need for a rectangular lip projection. Today, the majority of desks and tables in use and being sold (for both commercial and residential applications), no longer require the rectangular lip projection to extend under the desk. Similar to desks, chairs have also evolved over the last half century, transitioning from the traditional four wheel bases of the 1960's and 1970's (having a square footprint when viewed from above) to today's five wheel bases (having circular footprint when viewed from above).
FIGS. 1A-1D show a prior art chair mat 1 having a rectangular lip portion 2, where a base 3 of an office chair is shown in various positions relative to the prior art mat 1. The base 3 includes five wheels 4. As shown in FIG. 1A, the development of the base 3 makes traditional shapes of prior art chair mats 1 ineffective with the circular footprint of the wheels 5. Likewise, as shown in FIG. 1B, the rectangular lip portion 2 possesses front corners 6 that are seldom used, resulting in inefficiencies and wasted material. Additionally, as the wheels 4 roll to one of these front corners 6, one or more of the wheels 4 may have already slid off of the prior art chair mat 1 as shown in FIG. 1B. Moreover, the rear corners 7 of the prior art chair mat 1 cannot accommodate the circular footprint of the base 3, resulting in one of the wheels 4 sliding off the prior art chair mat 1 as shown in FIG. 1C. Another problem with the prior art chair mat 1 is that the inside corners 8 between the rectangular lip portion 2 and the remainder of the prior art chair mat 1 allow the wheels 4 to get stuck, thereby inhibiting free motion of the base 3 of the office chair as shown in FIG. 1D.
Accordingly, there is a need for an optimized chair mat shape that eliminates these problems, while making more efficient use of the surface area of the chair mat.